The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-07-31

Peculiar Articles of Food Used by Asiatio
Russian.
DR.. Henry LansdiI. in August Harper.
AS regards the food of the aborignals of Ash
attic Russia, vegetariansm cannot be said to
have made much Roadway among the nomads,
whether in Siberia or Turkistan.
Deprived for SO many months of the year by
snow of the sight of anything green when the
Siberians kill reindeer they carefully empty
its stomach of the updigested moss the animal
has eaten. and serve that up as deicacy, but
in winter they get little vegetable food besides.
Even with nomads of the steppes, what -four
food they eat is taken chiefly in the form of
Cruel It struck me as a strange contrast of
dietary customs when the archbishop of Yer
noye informed me that they intended to send
monks mission aries Of the Russian Church to
the Buruti or Kara-Kirghese, for the Russian
so they proposed to cut the knot by planting a
station on the shores of Lake Isik-Kul, where the
holy men could feed on fish.
The kirghese of the steppes live in the
mer almost entirely on milk, variously prepared,
whilst the rich eat mutton their staple food,
with the addition of beef, and occasionally
ford of horse-fesh. A Yakute bride on her
wedding-day sets before her lord and master as
the greatest of delica cies horse flesh sausages,
with boiled horses head. of which the brains
OF horse-hesh they eat Is APPALLING.
Their adage says, that ito eat much
meat and grow fat upon it, is the highest destiny
of man." L myself was not present at one Of
their orgies, but far back the days of
Strahlenberg it was said that four Yakutes
would eat a horse. Once more, the Gilyaks exist
q very different kind of food, for they al
most ichthyophagi, salmon being their principal
diet The fish comes up the Amur in such num-
bers that they can be tossed out on pitchfork.
Even the dogs go into the stream and
catch for themselves, and salmon such
as the finest in London may be pur-
chased in the season among the Gilyaks for a
penny each. The fish cut I'D and dried, without
further cooking. are eaten piece of similar size
per day serving alike for the Gilyak and one of
his dogs. / went to the lower Amur disposed to
confde in the theory that fish Diet by reason of
its phosphorus, was calculated to give brain
power to Students but after seeing the miserable
specimens of humanity in the Gilyaks who lived
on fish. my belief In this theory has been rudely
shaken.
The Gilyaks make another use of the salmon
which do not remember to have heard of in
other countries, inasmuch they employ the
"Iupitatze," or fsh-skiI strangers The fish
skin is prepared from two kinds of salmon. They
strip it off with dexterity, and by beating with
a mallet the scales, and render it
supple. Clothes thus made. l need hardly
say ara water proof. but they have an objec-
enough to purchase on the Amur a fish-skin
coat, which ] believe in England is unique for
there is nothing like 1t in the British Museum.
1t is handsomely embroidered on the back, the
intermixture of colors being skillfully wrought
in needle work.
clothing. In winter the Gilyak delights to
clothe himself in the skins OF his dogs, of fox
wolf, as being next warmest. The tribes fur
Their west indeed do all the Siberian people,
employ the skins of the reindeer and elk for
winter clothing. Such immense numbers of the
elk are killed that in some years may buy in
the town of Yeniseisk alone as many as ten
thousand skins.